Supporting vulnerable children runs in the family for Kylie Sampson and Shane White (pictured).
The siblings are child and youth workers in DCP’s casual staff pool, looking after young people living in residential care houses in Adelaide’s north.
They agree the opportunity to bring normalcy into the children’s lives, and the chance to be a good role model and help children thrive, are key drivers in their passion for the work.
"If you work with a young person for a consistent amount of time, just seeing the change in their resilience and their behaviour is very rewarding," Kylie says.
We caught up with Kylie and Shane to mark Thank a Youth Worker Day (7 May), which recognises the important role youth workers play in supporting young people in touch with the child protection system.
Across South Australia, the Department for Child Protection has more than 700 youth workers, senior youth workers and supervisors supporting children in residential care.
Kylie has been working in child protection for 11 years, with Shane following in her footsteps. Both have their own children and have found youth work a natural fit after working with young people previously – Kylie through child minding and Shane through coaching sport.
Kylie doesn’t hesitate to offer examples of the special moments that have shown the difference her work is making in young lives, referring to one boy who was reluctant to go to class once his older brother graduated from primary school.
But she was there to support and encourage him, and take him to therapy sessions and now, she says, he’s thriving.
"He’s gone from this child that was no good in social situations and crowds, to just kicking goals," Kylie says.
"On his first day of high school, he said, 'There’s a lot of people', and I said, 'You can do this,' and now he’s loving high school and he’s made a friend – it’s really nice to see."
Last week, she supported a girl who was nearing moving into an independent living placement to organise ABSTUDY payments, and found another child very excited to discover she was working a double-shift at his house.
Mentoring young people comes naturally for Shane, who often goes into "Dad mode" when young people need advice but without a lecture.
He also values the opportunity to help young people build important life skills, such as cooking and financial literacy.
Shane recalls one evening, while out at Semaphore with his wife, running into three siblings he’d cared for over previous years.
"As we walked around the corner near the jetty, all three of them were there with their dog and they recognised me and came up and gave me a big hug," he says.
The Department is continuously recruiting child and youth workers to support young people in residential care, with details on upcoming information sessions available on its website.
This story was prepared by the Department for Child Protection and is reproduced here with permission.
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